Sunday, October 15, 2017

Eighth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #10 Freddy vs Jason

I did some crowd-sourcing for movie suggestions and my friend Heidi B came up with 2003's Freddy vs Jason.  I am a big Nightmare on Elm Street fan and the earliest Friday the Thirteenth movies are not without their charms.  I don't know who thought it would be a good idea to bring Freddy Kreuger and Jason Voorhees together to duke it out but the results aren't half bad, especially for those of us who like the older movies.

As far as plot goes, no one remembers Freddy anymore so he doesn't have any power over people's dreams.  Somehow he is able to resurrect Jason and bring him back to Springwood (the town's name in the first Nightmare movies.  The plan is, when Jason starts killing, people will start talking about and being afraid of Freddy Kreuger again, thus giving him enough power to start killing himself.  Um, okay.  The trouble really starts when Jason won't stop killing people and Freddy is unable to control him. There's the usual bunch of teenagers who figure all this out and have to battle not only Freddy and Jason but also the adults in town, who are convinced that keeping their heads in the sand will keep them alive.  The action returns to Camp Crystal Lake for the third act and while there are a couple of survivors, it's tough to say who really wins in the FvJ cage match.

For a lot of this flick, they hewed to the slasher classics.  The Final Girl is a virgin with big boobs.  The first kid killed off is an asshole who Jason slices and dices right after the poor kid has sex.  There were clips of lots of the classic Nightmare dreams (Johnny Depp in a blender - still my favorite!).  The Final Girl lives in Nancy's house from the original Nightmare.  The parents are all in on it.  There's a sexually-active tomboy in a baseball hat (oh, wait, that's a Halloween and/or Carrie shoutout, isn't it?).  All of that is excellent.  But once things devolved into a slugfest between Freddy and Jason, I got bored.  Slashers are just - to me - less interesting when the bad guys are implacable, indefatigable and nigh indestructible, even when fighting each other.

Still, Freddy vs Jason is OODLES better than Zoombies, so there's that.

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